The ills that afflict Argentina are not simple or superficial, and the solutions to its problems require a more serious diagnosis than the one given by those who look for a scapegoat to blame this one-time promising country’s woes on. Understanding this today is more important than ever, because the country is going through a characteristic period of recovery and hope that appears from time to time, like a pause between violent swells of crises. Now is the time to start facing these long-standing problems, before they overwhelm us again.

This document is a revised version of the preface to the second Spanish edition of «History of the Argentine Crisis». The book was originally published in Swedish and later translated and published in English and Portuguese. The first Spanish edition was published by CADAL and TIMBRO in December 2003.

Mauricio Rojas was born in Santiago de Chile in 1950 and lives in Sweeden since 1974. He is a Member of the Sweeden Parlament, Associate Professor in the Department of Economic History at Lund University, Vice President of Timbro and Director of Timbro’s Center for Welfare Reform. He is author of a dozen books, among them, The Sorrows of Carmencita, Argentina’s crisis in a historial perspective (2002), Millennium Doom, Fallacies about the end of work (1999). Beyond the welfare state. Sweden and the quest for a post-industrial welfare model (2001) and The rise and fall of the swedish model (1998).